Roger Ver, who got into Bitcoin early and is well-known in the cryptocurrency world, is facing charges from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for tax fraud. Ver, who stopped being a U.S. citizen in 2014 and became a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, is accused of not paying $50 million in taxes.
The DOJ says Ver didn’t fill out tax forms for selling stuff or pay a tax when he left the U.S., even though he was supposed to. Ver got arrested in Spain recently, and the U.S. wants him sent back for trial.
The charges against Ver are about him not reporting his Bitcoin sales properly. According to the indictment, in November 2017, he sold a lot of bitcoins for about $240 million.
Even though he wasn’t a U.S. citizen then, he still had to tell the U.S. government about certain money he got from U.S. companies, like MemoryDealers and Agilestar.
The DOJ says Ver didn’t tell his accountant about getting and selling bitcoins from these companies in 2017. So, his tax return for that year didn’t show any profit or pay any tax on these transactions.
There are also claims that Ver gave wrong or unclear info to a law firm he hired, which led to false tax returns being filed.
These tax returns didn’t show the right value for MemoryDealers.com and Agilestar.com, or how much bitcoin they owned. Ver allegedly owned about 131,000 bitcoins at one point, with the companies owning 73,000 of them.
